6 years old laptop harddisk data

[Ef125]

hello everyone. so I got this -soon to be actually- 6 years old laptop which I have never changed any part of, except psu. I recently saw somewhere that after some time hdds start to fail. I have some quite important files there but when I checked it with a program called speccy, I didn't understand much of those values. what worries me is that they change from time to time. so I've uploaded them here and will decide to buy a new disc or not according to your advices. the left one is the old values, and the right are new. thanks for the suggestions!

http://i68.tinypic.com/2jdgx84.jpg

 

[Someone Somewhere]

HDDs can fail at any time, new or old. I don't think there's a lot of correlation between age and failure rate, other than for very new HDDs.

This is why you should always always always have backups, ideally with one offsite.

None of that looks particularly worrying, though the reallocated sectors are a little high.

 

[Ef125]

OK. do you think SSD or HDD is better for a backup? or should I use some upload server? (might be 30gb to upload) and is there anything I can do to stop the reallocated sectors from getting higher?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

There's no point in an SSD for a backup drive. For an OS drive, yes.

If you've only got 30GB and a good internet connection, an online service might be a good option. But make sure you think hard about security; a drive at a friend's house might be a better option if it's commercially sensitive.

 

[DSzymborski]

The more important the data, the more ways you should be backing up your data. I backup most things on an additional hard drive, to a cloud backup service, and onto a Blu-Ray disc. For the really crucial stuff, I actually keep a backup folder on every hard drive on every PC I own and make sure to save to multiple flash drives, including one in my safety deposit box (my bank is near the gas station I use, so a couple times a year, I run in and swap flash drives with the one in the box).

As to stopping reallocated sectors from getting higher, there's not much you can really do. Hard drives have moving, physical parts, and every one is going to fail given enough time. Your PC is good at managing data, but it's not perfect and any hard drive can go to that great magnetic storage cloud in the sky at any point.

Having a hard drive crash should be no more trouble than it takes to install the new one. Sadly, we get *many* posts from people who never back up their important files and their hard drive dies. It's tough to have to tell someone their choices are to spend a lot of money on a data recovery service (with no guarantee of recovery) and/or simply accept their files are gone forever. Don't join that group!

 

[Ef125]

thank you both. I'll get another HDD, copy the important files there. and probably copy a few on a flash too. thanks for the suggestions.